The Story of Britain

by Patrick Dillon

  Napoleon decided to invade Egypt and set sail along the Mediterranean. The British sent their youngest, most skilful admiral, Horatio Nelson, to chase him. Nelson found the French anchored in Aboukir Bay, near the mouth of the river Nile, with their guns pointing out to sea, ready for battle. Ignoring warnings that the water was too shallow, Nelson ordered his ships to sail behind the French fleet and attack from the land side, where their guns weren’t ready. After a few hours’ fighting, most of the French ships were sunk, and their flagship blown up.

  Napoleon returned to France. The defeat at the Battle of the Nile didn’t stop him wanting power. On the contrary, he seemed to want it even more. He had himself crowned Emperor Napoleon I, and went to war against Britain again.

  Britain’s prime minister at this time was William Pitt, son of the Great Commoner who had won Britain so many victories in the Seven Years War (to avoid confusion, the son is often called Pitt the Younger, and his father, Pitt the Elder). Pitt made alliances against Napoleon, and sent the kings of Europe money, but Napoleon beat them, and the Austrians, Prussians and Russians fled. Britain seemed unable to stop him.

  As his empire grew, Napoleon made one of his brothers king of Holland and another king of Spain, married the Austrian emperor’s daughter, and made friends with the Russian czar. It looked as if he would end up ruling the whole of Europe. He dreamed of invading Britain as well, and stood on the heights of northern France, staring at the white cliffs of Dover and picturing his armies marching into London.

  Fortunately Britain went on beating him at sea. The Royal Navy’s sailors came from all over the world, mixing English, Scots, Irish and Welsh, black sailors from the Caribbean, and Asians from India and China. Their officers were skilful navigators and fighters, promoted not just because they were aristocrats, but for their ability. In battle after battle the Royal Navy beat the French, until their ships didn’t dare leave harbour at all. Day and night, summer and winter, the British stood guard, stopping any ship from getting in or out of France.

  But one day a storm blew the British ships far out to sea and the French escaped, joined up with their Spanish allies, and sailed towards Britain.

  Horatio Nelson was sent to fight them. He knew how important the battle would be: if he lost, the French would invade, and Napoleon become emperor of Britain. He pursued them all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and back before catching up with them near Cape Trafalgar in southern Spain. As the two fleets drew closer, Nelson ordered signal flags to be hoisted to the mast of his flagship, HMS Victory. His signal read: “England expects that every man will do his duty.”

  As always, Nelson had thought up a new tactic for the battle. Instead of fighting the line of French and Spanish ships side by side, he attacked it at right angles in two columns, with HMS Victory leading one column, and HMS Royal Sovereign the other. The sailors cheered as they drew closer. When Victory reached the French line, her three rows of cannon roared out. As her sailors heaved at ropes to get the guns ready again, Victory broke through the line and turned behind it, where the French were unprepared. Nelson had already ordered another signal to be hoisted: “Engage the enemy more closely.”

  Victory herself could not have got any closer. The gunfire was deafening, and smoke coiled so thickly about the deck that the French could barely be seen. Men screamed, wood splintered and masts fell. But the British, who had spent so long at sea and fought so many battles, fired faster, and gradually the cannon fire from the French grew weaker. When the smoke eddied, burning ships drifted into view, their masts gone and rigging trailing over their sides. Soon the victory was complete, with two thirds of the French and Spanish ships destroyed or captured.

  But the British had suffered a terrible loss as well: Horatio Nelson was killed. All through the battle he had worn his best admiral’s uniform, even though his friend Captain Hardy urged him to put on an ordinary coat so the French sailors wouldn’t notice him. And as he and Hardy walked up and down the deck of Victory, a French sniper caught sight of him and shot him.

  Nelson was carried below. Hardy and the other officers drew round as he grew weaker, but he was still conscious when news of victory was brought.

  “Thank God I have done my duty,” he said.

  And then he died.

  Napoleon’s Mistake

  TRAFALGAR was a great victory. Unfortunately battles at sea don’t win wars, and on land Napoleon still couldn’t be defeated. In the same year as the Battle of Trafalgar, he had his greatest triumph so far by beating the Austrians and Russians at the Battle of Austerlitz. And Napoleon might have gone on winning, if he hadn’t made a terrible mistake. He decided to invade Russia.

  Russia is enormous. From the eastern edge of Europe it stretches thousands of miles to the Ural Mountains, and thousands of miles further across Siberian forests, where there are more wolves than people and lakes remain frozen half the year round. Only a madman would try to conquer such a place, but perhaps Napoleon was a little mad. No one had ever defeated him on land, and he thought he could conquer the whole world.

  At first the invasion seemed easy enough. As the French soldiers marched eastwards, the Russians fell back. They fought battles and the Russians fell back again. As they approached Moscow, the Russian capital, they felt sure the Russians would give in.

  But the Russian czar simply retreated further east. For each army the French beat, he summoned another. Rather than let the French take Moscow, the Russians set fire to it. Napoleon’s soldiers groaned: they had been expecting to find food there. Their legs ached, they were sick of fighting, and thousands of miles of Russia still stretched before them.

  Emperor Napoleon realized the task of conquering Russia was impossible. Abandoning his army, he climbed into a coach and drove back home. The French soldiers were left to follow him as best they could. They had nothing to eat, so they shot their horses and ate them. They ate the mules that carried their guns and ammunition – then they had to leave their guns behind. Meanwhile, the Russians pursued them, attacking at night like wolves. Winter – the Russian winter, colder than anything we know in the west of Europe – fell on Napoleon’s doomed army. Men woke in the morning to find their friends frozen to death. Snow buried the roads, and soldiers sank into snowdrifts, unable to march any further. By the time the French reached the border of Russia, there was hardly anything left of Napoleon’s great army.

  When they saw that Napoleon had been defeated, the kings and emperors of Europe joined together to finish him off. All this time, a British army led by General Arthur Wellesley had been fighting the French in Spain, gradually forcing them back towards the borders of France. Napoleon’s enemies converged from all sides, until at last he surrendered.

  The war had gone on for ten years, and everyone cheered when it came to an end. Napoleon was sent to the island of Elba, off the coast of Italy, and peace returned to Europe.

  But peace did not last long.

  The Battle of Waterloo

  KING Louis XVI’s brother was made king of France, and the French soon began to complain. Under Napoleon they had become the strongest country in Europe, and they hated the thought that their great days were over. When news came that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, they ran excitedly out into the streets.

  “Have you heard? The emperor’s returning to France!”

  Tricolore flags were waved in Paris. The king ran away and old soldiers hurried to sign up to Napoleon’s army. Napoleon led them to Belgium, where the British were camped under the command of General Wellesley, who had just been made duke of Wellington.

  Wellington had beaten every one of Napoleon’s generals, but had never fought Napoleon himself. His army was small, and he knew he couldn’t win without help. As his Prussian allies were still far away, he ordered his soldiers to gather at the Belgian capital, Brussels.

  Brussels was full of aristocrats who were accompanying the army. The duchess of Richmond decided to hold a party for them, and since Wellington didn’t want anyone to pa
nic, he agreed to attend as well, as if nothing was wrong. But in the middle of the party he was sent a message that Napoleon’s soldiers were crossing the border. Wellington pretended it wasn’t important, but sent word round all the officers to slip out quietly and go back to the army.

  “How odd!” said the duchess of Richmond just after midnight. “There are no men to dance with! Where have all the officers gone?”

  By then they were desperately galloping south to join their soldiers. The next day they fought the French at the Battle of Quatre Bras, but were forced to retreat to the village of Waterloo where Wellington decided to make his stand. At dawn he ordered his men to take up position along a ridge. He hoped he could hold out until the Prussians arrived, but when he looked at the French army through his telescope, he wondered if it would be possible. Blue French uniforms filled the whole plain. Artillerymen were preparing their guns, and cavalry officers galloping to and fro, while columns of infantrymen – Napoleon’s famous Old Guard – cheered as the emperor’s carriage drove past.

  Wellington knew Napoleon would start by bombarding his army with cannonballs, so he ordered his men to lie down behind the ridge. When the French opened fire, their cannonballs flew harmlessly overhead.

  Then he saw the French cavalry getting ready to charge. “Form into squares!” he ordered.

  That was the best way for footsoldiers to fight cavalry. All along the ridge, men in red uniforms hurried to form into squares bristling with guns and bayonets.

  “Here they come,” they whispered.

  The French cavalry charged again and again, breaking in waves against the red squares, only to be beaten back down the slope with bodies and wounded horses left behind. As the day wore on, the air grew heavy with the stench of blood, but Wellington kept his telescope trained on a column of dust to the east. He knew it was the Prussian army, marching to rescue him.

  Napoleon saw the dust too. He realized he hadn’t much time left, so he ordered his best soldiers, the Old Guard, to attack.

  The Old Guard had never been defeated. Four abreast, they marched up the slope towards the British.

  “Form a line!” ordered Wellington, and the squares broke up as his soldiers hurried to obey. A thin red line stretched out along the ridge.

  “Fire!” shouted the sergeants.

  The men were tired and scared, but they knew this was their final chance. Desperately they fired, reloaded, and fired again. And from the back of the French column a terrible groan went up: “The Old Guard are retreating!”

  Just then the Prussians arrived. The French hesitated for one more moment, then turned and fled. Napoleon could do nothing to stop the panic. Gunners ran from their cannon. Cavalrymen leaped onto their horses and galloped away. Wellington saw the confusion through his telescope and knew he had won a great victory. He lifted his hat and waved it to give the order to advance.

  The Battle of Waterloo finally ended the wars which had begun with the French Revolution. Napoleon was captured and sent to the distant island of St Helena in the south Atlantic – too far away for him ever to escape to France again – while the French king was put back on his throne. Wellington became a hero, and Waterloo is still remembered as a great British victory.

  But it was won at a terrible cost. Thousands died in the battle, the last that the French and British would ever fight. As night fell, the moon shone on their silent bodies, the dead of both sides mingled together. By then the duke of Wellington was riding back across the battlefield to his headquarters.

  “Next to a battle lost,” he said afterwards, “the greatest misery is a battle gained.”

  And as he looked about him, his officers saw that, in the moonlight, his cheeks were wet with tears.

  The End of the Slave Trade

  WARS change things. Men leave home to fight and women take over their work. Everything is thrown into disorder.

  “And afterwards?” people ask each other. “What will the world be like afterwards? Will things go back to how they were before?”

  During the wars, those who wanted Britain to be made fairer had been forced to stop protesting. William Pitt thought it too dangerous to talk of changing things when the country was fighting for its life. But when the war ended, everyone felt restless. People didn’t want things to go on in the same way. First America had made itself free, and then France. Why couldn’t the whole world be free? Why couldn’t everyone be free? And that included the Africans Britain had turned into slaves.

  The terrible crime of slavery had continued all through the Georgian years. Slave ships still appeared off the coast of West Africa. Men and women were still captured, sold like cattle, and forced onto ships for the Middle Passage. Chains still bit into their legs and they still died of thirst in the darkness of the ships’ holds.

  Through those years, the ports the ships sailed from, like Bristol and Liverpool, became rich, and so did landowners in the Caribbean. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of black men and women worked on their plantations, whipped and starved, and had children who were born slaves, never knowing what it was like to be free.

  But more and more people began to realize how stupid it was to think black people any different from whites. When they were allowed a proper education, black people did just as well. Francis Williams, a black poet, went to Cambridge University. Ignatius Sancho, who was born on a slave ship, and whose father committed suicide rather than live as a slave, escaped slavery to become a musician and writer.

  An MP called William Wilberforce believed passionately that as long as slavery existed, the British could not call themselves civilized. So he began a campaign to ban the slave trade.

  Many tried to stop him. “You can’t end slavery,” they said. “Businesses will suffer. Sailors will be put out of work. The sugar farmers will lose money.”

  William Wilberforce ignored them. He and his friend Thomas Clarkson collected evidence about the cruelty of slave owners, and described the horror slaves suffered on the voyage from Africa to the Caribbean.

  “Never, never will we desist,” he told the House of Commons, “till we have extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour to this country.”

  In 1807 William Wilberforce got his law passed, and although it was a little longer before keeping a slave was banned, the evil traffic of the slave ships came to an end. Families in West Africa could sleep in peace. And the black men and women of the Caribbean islands knew that their children would be born free.

  The Romantics

  EVERYTHING seemed different after the slave trade was abolished. Freedom was in the air, like the smoke from a bonfire that spreads from street to street to make people all over town raise their heads. Everyone sensed something new. If the slave trade had been abolished, what else could change?

  Mary Wollstonecraft wrote a book arguing that it was time to stop treating women as second best. In those days women didn’t do proper jobs, and men talked about them as if they were only good for marrying and having children. That was a kind of slavery, Mary Wollstonecraft said, and if women could only be educated, everyone would see how their talents had been wasted.

  Inspired by the idea of freedom, musicians composed music that was wilder and more passionate than ever before (Ludwig van Beethoven, a German, was the most famous). Writers wrote poetry about youth, love and freedom – poetry so powerful and uncontrolled that some people thought them mad. John Keats wrote poems day and night, and died young in Rome, still dreaming of all the verses he hadn’t been able to write. Percy Shelley, who imagined a world with no rules, drowned at sea trying to sail his boat through a storm. William Wordsworth went to Paris to see the French Revolution for himself. Afterwards he wrote:

  Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

  But to be young was very heaven!

  The wildest of the Romantic poets was Lord Byron,
who was handsome, listened to no one, and behaved exactly as he pleased. People shook their heads when they heard stories of what he did.

  “Mad,” they said. “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

  But the poets weren’t mad. They were writing a new kind of poetry for a new kind of age – an age when kings were killed and slaves set free.

  An age when no one knew what was going to happen next.

  TIMELINE

  1692 The Macdonald clan is attacked by the Campbells in the Massacre of Glencoe.

  1702 William dies (Mary died earlier, in 1694), and Mary’s sister Anne becomes queen.

  1704 During the War of the Spanish Succession, John Churchill, later duke of Marlborough, beats the French at the Battle of Blenheim.

  1707 The Act of Union turns Scotland and England into one country.

  1714 Queen Anne dies and, through the Protestant Succession, a distant relative, George of Hanover, becomes King George I.

  1715 Jacobites rebel in favour of the Old Pretender, but are stopped at the Battle of Sheriffmuir.

  1720 Investors lose fortunes in the South Sea Bubble.

  1721 Sir Robert Walpole becomes Britain’s first prime minister.

  1739 The highwayman Dick Turpin is hanged at York.

  1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie leads a Jacobite rebellion in Scotland. He is beaten next year at the Battle of Culloden.

  1756–1763 The Seven Years War makes Britain the most powerful country in the world. 1759 is her annus mirabilis, with the victories of Minden, Quebec and Quiberon Bay.

  1765 Clive of India, who won the Battle of Plassey in 1757, buys Bengal for the East India Company.

  1768–1771 On Captain Cook’s first voyage he discovers the east coast of Australia.